Living on Purpose: Finding God's Best for Your Life

Rating:
Summary: Self-help? Yes and no.
Review: If the modern world is an expressway leading noplace (i.e. utopia), where can we find an offramp leading in a different direction, i.e. someplace? You are way too busy, too much in debt, too little related to your family and friends. You consider yourself a Christian, but what that means is that you may go to church on Sunday (if you have the time and the energy). You suspect that if you really believed that Jesus knew what he was talking about your life might look a lot different than it does. Is there a way out of the rat race to something more lasting and meaningful?

You might consider Sine's little book another in the genre of self-help tomes focused on developing a personal mission statement and enhancing both your own individualism and your consumerist, careerist ambitions. In reality the authors are wanting to subvert all of that. Sine's countercultural goals here are community, mission, and a vital, life-changing relationship with God. If you are looking for that off-ramp then begin here.

Rating:
Summary: Read, but read with caution.
Review: Living on Purpose: Finding God's Best for Your Life
Christine and Tom Sine
Baker Books 2002, 206pp.

Futurist Tom Sine is a master of metaphor. At the end of the 1990's, Sine released Mustard Seed vs. McWorld, drawing attention to the incompatibilities between kingdom perspectives and contemporary Western values. The mustard-seed kingdom of God begins unnoticed - its progress is often imperceptible - but it transforms the world with its quiet, steady influence on the soul of humankind. McWorld, the unabashed Western pursuit of the biggest and the best, generates tremendous sound and light, but is devoid of enduring substance. Tom and Christine (Tom's wife) Sine revisit this analysis of contemporary society in their latest book, Living on Purpose. Once again, metaphor is integral to the approach.

Boom City, the under-girding metaphor of Living on Purpose, is McWorld on a global scale. Conceived in the Enlightenment, nurtured in the Industrial Revolution, and now super-charged by the cyber-revolution, Boom City is a one-world economic order connected by satellite dishes, fax machines, and the internet. Its purpose is profit. Its price is personal serenity and negligence of the eternal kingdom.

The Sine's suggest that if we are serious about finding God's best for our lives, it doesn't begin with the question, "What do I want and what turns me on?" but "What does God want and how does God want to use me to make a difference in this world?" We discover the answers to those latter questions when we listen for God's voice in retreat from busyness, in stillness, in reflection on the past, in the spiritual disciplines, in the needs of others, and in dreams and imagination (to name a few). Listening to God's voice enables us to discover our mission and set goals that are harmonious with our true nature as citizens of God's kingdom.

Living on Purpose makes a great point, but suffers from a somewhat disjointed construction. It's not readily apparent how the separate chapters form a cohesive whole. More importantly, the book needs to give more attention to the mechanics of writing a mission statement and setting goals. As it is, Living on Purpose is largely anecdotal, which goes a long way to helping the reader understand what the destination can look like, but does little to help the reader actually get there. There are some great stories in this book - from individual business people and students who have discovered a kingdom-centered life to kingdom-focused communities and churches such as Mars Hill Fellowship, Burnt Street House, Solomon's Porch, and Temescal. Plus, the Sine's have included "off-ramps" or specific, practical ideas on how to live a kingdom-centered life. The anecdotes and ideas are inspiring. However, readers of Living on Purpose will need to refer to Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or First Things First, or Hyrum Smith's What Matters Most, to get more practical help on writing a mission statement or setting goals. On its own, the book is liable to send the reader in a multitude of directions, trying ideas and copying examples without really doing the hard groundwork needed to form a personal mission statement and set of corresponding goals before launching into action. Read this book, but read with caution.

Rating:
Summary: Finding God's best
Review: This is a fabulous book, and one of the best books I have read about understanding our "call". Christine and Tom walk us through understanding God's purpose for our lives. The practical application sections, or "off-ramps" as they call them, are very focused and ask provocative questions that cause you to really examine the events in your life and the passions of your heart. This is a great book for a weekend personal spiritual retreat. I love how Christine and Tom challenge me to live a radical life of simplicity based on following Jesus with a transforming whole-life faith. This is not a book for the passive, you must have the desire to live on purpose.